Wildlife and Landscape Photography Blog

The Kiss of Death

This capture of a yawning Black Mamba was created during my Frogs of the World Workshop as we visited the Reptilia Zoo after we had completed the frog photography portion of the workshop.

The Black Mamba is the deadly snake in Africa, with venom potent enough to kill a human in as little 30 minutes. A bite from the Black Mamba is known as the “Kiss of Death”.

To create this image I positioned my 105mm Micro lens with rubber lens hood (to protect the glass enclosure from scratches) up against the glass enclosure and using a setting ISO 100, f16 @ 1/60 sec with my Nikon SB400 Speelight on a Wimberley F-2 Macro Bracket. As the snake began to yawn I created several frames to capture the mouth fully open.